The future of digital communication and privacy Will Cathcart
it’s a treat to have with us the head of
whatsapp will Cathcart hi Chris thank
you so much for having me and for giving
me the chance to have this conversation
you know I’m struck by the fact that
this conversation had to be digital
you know we because of coronavirus
haven’t been able to get together face
to face for Ted or really almost
anything else and in fact you and I have
had a number of conversations in the
lead-up to today and they’ve all had to
be digital we’ve never actually met face
to face even though it feels like we
have and we at whatsapp you know work on
a product and a technology to try to
help people have face to face
conversations when they can’t be face to
face and we’ve seen in the last few
months that be more necessary than ever
and people turn to whatsapp even more
than they had before as you mentioned in
places like Afghanistan and all around
the world to be able to talk to connect
with a loved one or do even more as you
mentioned you know more sensitive things
for governments to conduct work or
discussions with the people in the
country for businesses to get work done
for doctors to connect with patients
we’ve seen doctors for example in
northern Italy use whatsapp as a way to
connect with patients and they couldn’t
be physically together and you you put
it perfectly we believe this works
because people trust what’s up they
trust that they can have a deeply
sensitive private conversation when they
can’t be sitting face-to-face with the
same level of security and privacy they
would have had in the real world’s
digitally on what’s up and the reason
why as you mentioned is a technology we
use called end to end encryption which
many of you watching the talk will be
familiar with but for those who aren’t
and an encryption is a it’s a pretty
special technology because what
let’s you do is send a message to
someone or make a call to someone and
know that they’re the only one who will
get it so for example Chris you could
send a message to your doctor and know
that as soon as it leaves your phone
it’s scrambled no-one can see it along
the way
not even what’s that until it reaches
your doctor and then they can see it and
there have been a number of questions
and discussions around this recently as
you mentioned even in fact in liberal
democracies there’s increasingly been a
question as to whether that kind of
technology should be something you as a
person have access to to use or whether
we need to change to a model where if
you’re calling someone messaging someone
video chatting with someone there has to
be a central repository of that some
company your government have a way to go
access what you’re saying we think this
is a pretty serious choice with
meaningful consequences for people as we
build back you know kovat accelerated a
trend where we were increasingly
communicating digitally instead of face
to face already and now as we enter a
world where at times we’re gonna have to
communicate digitally and even when we
don’t have to increasingly we will to
not have the ability to do that securely
knowing that no one can listen to your
conversation we think would be a huge
issue
you’d have to worry about hackers and
criminals accessing your conversations
or even governments and foreign
governments eavesdropping on what you’re
doing and more broadly if we want to
live in a world where governments can
use it to communicate doctors can talk
to patients educators can talk to
students and you can talk to the people
closest in your life about the most
sensitive things we think we need to
have end-to-end encryption and products
like whatsapp that are secure so you
know those conversations are safe well
the the scale of whatsapp is astonishing
I think you have like 2 billion active
users and there’s a hundred billion
messages per day a hundred billion
messages per day I can’t get my head
around it give us give us a story
of how encrypted communication has
really led to something positive so that
we can just get the feel of it in action
yeah I mean you know a great example of
this is the ability for a government to
communicate what you can’t be together
so we you know we saw stories with
coronavirus of the British military
reaching out to members of the military
with orders and instructions on where
they need it to be over what’s that of
course we hear about that in the news
because we have no way of knowing we
have no way of seeing and more broadly
you know obviously not everyone’s a
government official or working in
government but if you think about your
life and what you do in a typical day
and a lot of the countries where
whatsapp is popular people use it not
just to talk to their loved ones but to
conduct business you use it to
communicate with shopkeepers small
businesses in particular to order food
to order clothes to book services and
knowing that you can do that and share
all the information you share as part of
a you know economic transaction actually
I think is enabled because you know that
it’s secure you know that no one’s
looking at what you’re saying
I mean delivering trustable privacy to
people is clearly an important good some
people worry about that you know that
carries with it an inherent is it an
inherent danger that people can use that
security to for example share dangerous
messages or or even transmit truly
obnoxious material like in its most
extreme like child pornography how it’s
not just a trade off that society has to
make it’s one things versus yeah they
can you can you adjust the balance so
that you can kind of minimize the risks
while still giving the security yeah we
believe that you you can give security
and take steps to combat bad abuse we do
that every day in fact we lead the
industry on foreign encrypted messaging
service being able to find and detect
abuse in general and as you mentioned
people sharing inappropriate illegal
imagery about children we find into text
thousands
of accounts and and report them each
month based on things like someone in
the conversation seeing something and
feeling uncomfortable and choosing to
report it to us at which point we can
see or patterns of behavior but what we
we don’t have is every message sent by
over 2 billion people and we believe
that fundamentally the security
trade-off the the cost to your safety
for us to start collecting every one of
those messages would be disastrous and
you don’t want us to and this feels new
and unfamiliar because it’s new to us as
a society to have digital conversations
but it’s not new to us as a society to
have conversations we’ve done it for
thousands of years with an expectation
that when you say something to someone
else Chris as soon as the words leave
your mouth they’re gone and we’ve chosen
even though we could as a society not to
do all sorts of things you could do to
fight crime you know we at this point
could build a camera and a microphone
and install it in every living room in
the United States hooked up to a central
server for the government to access it
but I think naturally we would recoil in
horror at the consequences of doing
something like that even if there would
be some cases where it would help solve
crimes and our view is that if we’re
gonna be forced to have conversations
digitally because we can’t be sitting
face-to-face we shouldn’t have to give
up the security and privacy we’ve had
for hundreds of years in that transition
my last question before community
questions coronavirus suddenly
everyone’s in lockdown it’s made a huge
difference to your business give us give
us some numbers and descriptions of how
it’s changed behavior yeah I mean for us
what we’ve seen is more people sending
messages you mentioned over a hundred
billion messages a day in April in
particular we’ve seen a lot of people
doing video calls to connect with people
especially group video calls we actually
expanded the limit so you can call it to
eight people now and what’s that and
we’ve seen a lot of governments and
health agencies use it to get
information out to people so help lines
in over 70 countries and agencies we can
get information but the you know the
stories that stick with us the most are
where people are doing things
that they just couldn’t do before you
know for me the idea that doctors are
using it to communicate with patients is
fantastic and the idea that you don’t
have to go into a doctor’s office or a
hospital to get help is unbelievable the
idea that governments are using it we’ve
heard stories of governments in both
India and Brazil where whatsup is
possible where court systems using
whatsapp to communicate about cases
because you don’t want to bring everyone
into a courtroom mmm all right take
community your questions
hmm how do you balance privacy and the
risk in the spread of misinformation
this is a great question we think about
this a lot and the way we’ve dealt with
misinformation is predominantly by
changing the product to recognize the
fact that it is private and it is secure
and so it shouldn’t be a place where you
can broadcast information so for example
a little over a year ago we changed
whatsapp so that you can’t forward a
message to more than five people at once
if you see something you can’t spread it
along actually in the last few months
just as coronavirus was expanding around
the world we launched a feature where
now if a specific message has been
forwarded many times you can only
forward it to one person at a time and
there’s no quick forward button we’ve
also partnered with journalism
fact-checking organizations so that
people who want to in whatsapp when they
see a message can send it off to a
journalist for fact-checking which helps
them find out whether it’s true or not
obviously not everyone’s going to use it
but what we’re really excited about is
it means that even though we can’t see
what messages are going around
journalists can they can get a sample of
what types of people saying in their
country and use that to correct
misinformation in mass media mmm it’s
interesting you can’t see the
information itself but you can see what
misinformation might look black at a
meta level and then maybe do something
go out and with it with a message to
everyone in the country about you know
here’s the facts about coronavirus mmm
my next question assuming we have one
so this is from Jacqueline Ashby what’s
the current status and involvement of
what’s up in F in Facebook’s
cryptocurrency Libre Project yeah
I can’t speak to all the work liebherr
and the libra team are doing but I know
they’re having a number of conversations
with regulators about how do you build a
cryptocurrency product in a way that’s
safe and secure and resistant to all the
types of harm’s you might see in other
cryptocurrency projects we’re excited
about it on what’s that because of the
economic opportunity you know we have a
lot of people who use whatsapp who are
international immigrants and working in
a country far from their home who want
to send money back to the people that
they care about at home and today that’s
so expensive and just as what’s that
maid calling your family when you’re
overseas free we would love to make it
much much cheaper for you to send money
home in the context this question is
Facebook obviously owns whatsapp how is
that relationship by the way well do you
feel is that a healthy relationship are
you allowed to do your work without
having to constantly somehow lean
towards Facebook’s bottom line in some
way yeah great question I think it’s
been a fantastic relationship because
since whatsapp joined Facebook over five
years ago Facebook has been able to
invest in bringing to whatsapp to
everyone around the world for free you
know it’s easy for especially those over
the United States us to forget this but
calling and texting people used to be at
ferociously expensive all around the
world even in the u.s. it cost but in a
lot of developing countries around the
world you would be talking tens of cents
or more for every single text you sent
you know large amounts of money for a 10
20 minute phone call what’s that made
that all free and by becoming part of
Facebook Facebook was able to take away
actually what’s up used to charge users
a dollar to use the service Facebook
took that away invested in expanding it
and invested in the infrastructure so we
could offer not just texting but things
like voice and video calling for free
worldwide so this is possibly really
puzzling to people it certainly was to
me you told me that even like five years
after Facebook of quiet you you still
don’t actually make money how can that
be
yeah we we don’t we don’t generate a ton
of revenue we aspire to it’s not that we
don’t think there’s interesting business
opportunities with what’s up we think
there are but we think connecting
everyone so they can have free
communication is step one and step two
is connecting people with businesses and
we’re already starting to see in a lot
of the countries where whatsapp is
popular people communicate with
businesses for free to find out about
products buy things book services we
have millions and millions of businesses
using for example our what’s that
business app and we believe that down
the line there’ll be obviously great
opportunities we can we can add for
those businesses that will generate
revenue for example we hear from tons of
businesses that they want to reach more
customers we can help businesses that
have never advertised before advertised
on Instagram or Facebook for the first
time and find more customers should be
great for economic activity but the
focus for us has been how do you reach
people all around the world how do you
get them connected how do you get the
businesses connected and down the line
the opportunities will come we’ll take
two more community questions what do you
think will be the transformational and
longer-term impact 1119 on technology
use in our daily lives are we all
getting confused between the real world
and the virtual world now is this is
this gonna take over and be our lives in
the future so it’s a great question Anna
yeah that’s a great question Anna I mean
I think to some extent we’re gonna find
that things we thought you had to do
face to face you can do digitally and we
will adapt to think of those as similar
to what we did face to face even if that
sounds hard to believe you know I my
wife and I have a daughter she’s almost
2 years old and we had this funny
realization after we was born that we
didn’t agree on how to pronounce her
name
I say Naomi and my wife says Naomi and
as parents that’s like the worst thing
you can do is disagree on how to
pronounce your daughter’s name and it
took us a couple months to figure out
how that happened before we realized the
answer was that every conversation we’d
had about naming our daughter had been
typed it hadn’t actually been in person
face to face but we didn’t know that as
people we just
think of those conversations the same
and so I think part of the
transformation from Cova 19 is we’re
gonna we’re gonna communicate remotely
we’re gonna work remotely they’re gonna
do a lot more of this digitally and to
them it won’t feel any different or as
different as you might think as when
they were sitting next to each other
nice question
I know we have another one well while
we’re waiting for that I’m gonna ask you
this just just you know the hearing
President Ghani talked about the power
of these face-to-face conversations
humans to humans in a circle is there a
fundamental difference between the way
that humans communicate when they’re
texting each other versus when they’re
speaking and do you think like is there
a correction on us that could happen in
the world now is companies like yours
and others start building more video
communication as opposed to just text
text text that it might change this
cycle of outrage if you like that
text-based social media seems to have
driven yeah great question I mean for us
look we I personally you know my
preference would have been to have this
conversation in person you know my
preference would have been for us to be
all together in Vancouver to talk cuz I
do think there are parts of the
face-to-face conversation that
technology doesn’t just capture I think
the challenge for us is people who build
technological products is how do we get
closer to that how do we make it so that
if you’re having a conversation with
someone you have to be separated by
thousands of miles or you have to be
separated by six feet how do we make it
so that it feels as close to
face-to-face video helps with that you
know even are there improvements you can
make to that to make it feel more
emotive other improvements you can make
to it so it’s really truly as secure and
private as you would have had with a
face-to-face conversation you know are
there ways you can make it so that if i
text you something it doesn’t feel like
that’s gonna hang around forever I think
that’s the challenge for us and part of
why we believe with whatsapp it’s so
important that we match the security and
privacy you have in-person digitally and
not say hey this digital world is
totally different
we should change all the ways human
beings communicate and completely upend
the rules no we should try to match that
as best we can because there’s something
magical about people talking to each
other privately hmm well well I think
we’re out of time thank you for I mean
it really is an amazing company thank
you for many lovely pictures and videos
I get pretty much every day for my
grandkids couldn’t happen without what’s
happened quite the same way I think and
you know you’re at the middle of an
incredibly important debate about how
humans use these tools to build the
future so thank you for sharing if
someone wants to reach out to what’s up
and they have a suggestion or a question
how how can they best reach out to you
then come up come on our website what’s
up comm and options for how you can
reach out and or you know you know find
us on twitter at whatsapp and let us
know what you think thank you so much
Chris for the chance to talk we think
this is a really known issue and one we
hope others are paying attention to all
right thank you
well best we’ll take care thank you